A gang of teenagers brood at a bus
shelter's bisected plastic funnel canopy.
November wraps them in damp lamp night,
a gnome wraps them genomic rhyme.

Folk leak off trained to bark at strangers.
The road's like an engine gone flat.
Guys rev their bikes on the pavements
& dolls sit it out on the rails.

No one crosses & the air gets split
in a garrotted shout, a ritual the dark
engulfs with their homeless hunchback
sorrows & numb pallid faces.

The bus rolls in bringing an electric city,
dropping off bodies, threat, concealed,
felt but never spoken of as
the door closes with a lie of security.

It's glad to depart; even before it arrived
they'd known not to count on it,
there's no protection for their exposure,
they're offered none, they give none.

Huddled into an end, as in a stadium,
their mobile programmed text message
reads, "You're all shit & you know it.
Bleep...bleep, so much for Alpha Man."

gift of tongues